Even among the women who cleaned
the hospital, who had no illusions, could afford no judgments, she was
unusual. She was driven. All the nurses on her shift knew that, if there
was a dirty job that needed doing, Maria would do it cheerfully,
laughing at it as if she were changing a baby. No amount of bedpans or
trash bags could deter her. Maria knew that the worst the hospital had
was nothing compared to her own life. She knew it was a little crazy,
but she felt if she didn't laugh, she would kill someone. A mess was
just a mess, you didn't get mad, you just cleaned it up and went on with
life.

Out in the hall, she saw her supervisor coming. So she
walked to the nurses' station, picked up the trash, and emptied it into
the big cart the custodian would take out later. Her friend, Elena, was
turning down the hall, her back to the supervisor. Before Elena could
say a word, Maria signaled her, rolling her eyes over her shoulder.
Elena saw the signal and kept walking. Later, if the patients gave them a
moment's reprieve, they could sit and talk over coffee, compare notes
on their family tragedies. Elena had lost family, too, and she marched
in the plaza to protest. Maria had a hidden agenda, however, and felt
she could not afford to be seen, not yet.

Each day, hundreds of
mothers and grandmothers marched in the plaza in front of the Argentine
presidential palace carrying placards with the pictures of the
disappeared, the family members who had been taken away by government
security forces. No one dared touch the women, who were called "The
Mothers of the Plaza. " It was strange, but Maria had to laugh, the big,
tough government men would be shamed if they had to cart off a bunch of
old women.

The hospital security guard walked by the station on
his rounds. Maria knew him, and liked him, he was a family man, but the
sight of the uniform made her feel like throwing the scalding coffee in
his face and stomping him into unconsciousness. She smiled, said hi. She
never betrayed her true feelings. No one but Elena knew who she really
was. Little by little, she had found out more about her missing family.
One patient had hinted at the building where they had been taken for
interrogation. Another had told her, whispering, about what happened to
pregnant women who were taken away by the secret police. A prostitute
had been hospitalized, black and blue from a beating, and Maria had
learned from her the reason why the soccer field lights were always on
at night-- even when there were no games, there were burials.

She
had confided in no one but Elena, and she had shared this secret only
after learning of Elena's missing family. Today Elena had spoken with
another grandmother who worked in Records, and she had showed her the
address of an adoptive family with a boy about the right age to be
Maria's grandson. The address was located in the suburbs near the city.
She wrote it in her little black book, and hurried back to work.

When
her shift ended, she packed up her lunch things and headed for the bus
stop, calling goodbye to Elena on the way out. The oppressive heat lay
heavy on the city. She was too tired to endure it, and started to
perspire as soon as she left the hospital. She waited, exhausted, in the
strong sunlight at the bus stop. When the bus came, she pulled herself
up the steep stairs. A troop truck passed the bus as she rode toward
home; she casually looked away, filled again with the passionate hatred.
When she got to her stop, she went to the little grocery store, not so
much for groceries as to survey her street for a van, a plain car with
three or four men in it waiting for something, with no apparent reason
to be there. To live, to find her family, she had to hide. If they knew
she had survived, they would have no compunctions about killing her,
too, to cover their tracks.

Climbing the long stairs to her
apartment, she looked for signs someone might be waiting, saw nothing,
put the key in the lock, and went in. She put the groceries in the
fridge, got out of the uniform that made her look like her enemies, and
took a long shower.

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When Maria had bathed, she sat at the kitchen
table in her robe, listening to the radio, thinking about the new home
she had found, about the troops in the street. As night fell, she had
another cup of coffee at the kitchen table, looking out the window over
the rooftops of the city at the lights of the soccer field, strangely
bright in the distance, bustling with activity late into the night, the
exhaust of heavy equipment rising over the field, a pall in the night.

Tomorrow
was her day off. She could go out to the suburbs and take a look at the
house, maybe find her grandson. She was so tired, she had to laugh at
the prospect of going anywhere. After a quick supper, she turned off the
radio and went to bed. She was reluctant to go to bed because every
night was the same. The same memories, the same self-doubt. Could she
have stopped them? Did she fail her daughter? The memories of that night
were burned in her mind and her sorrowful heart, and she couldn't help
reliving the torment. She thought to herself:

"At first, there had
been an insistent knock on the door. Impudent, aggressive, to be
knocking so loud at this time of night, I thought. Rude, intentionally
rude, and aggressive, there was a brutal, uncaring aspect to the
knocking. It was 11:30 at night. My husband was in bed. He had to get up
early for his classes. My son-in-law and daughter and I were sitting at
the kitchen table, laughing about the baby she was expecting when we
all heard this harsh knocking at the door. Before I could get there to
open it, a loud voice: "Open up. This is the police." The police? What
on earth? Something bad must have happened, I thought, running to the
door. Now I wish I had sent the children away, to hide, to run,
anything, anything but simply opening the door, trusting the police.

"They
came into my kitchen, the police, the military police. There were
nearly a dozen of them, in the uniforms of military police, with Navy
markings. So strange, so incongruous, what is the Navy doing in my
kitchen? Then they asked for identification. By this time, my husband
was up, walking bleary-eyed into the kitchen. They grabbed him,
handcuffed him, took him outside.

"I screamed. I began to see red.
Everything was outlined, the edges of my vision were daubed in red.
They took my son-in-law away. My daughter fought them, a pregnant woman
fighting with these big men. I grabbed a frying pan, then something hit
me, I don't remember much after that. I woke up on the kitchen floor, in
a pool of blood. My head hurt. I remember thinking "good thing I have a
hard head," laughing as I felt for the wound, a scalp cut over a
swollen spot.

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"I never believed it would happen to my family. We
were not revolutionaries. My husband was a college professor, my son a
popular journalist, with a column of his own in the newspaper. We
certainly were no threat to the military government that had taken
power. I had heard of the secret police squads arriving in the night to
pick up suspected terrorists, leftists, communists, black marketers.
Although their rights were trampled on, it was because they were
violent, were subversives, plotting against the government, we were
told. I had never feared them, never was concerned for my own family's
safety because we were not like those leftists. We were humble, honest
people, the establishment. Salt of the earth. How much more harmless
could you be than an elderly college professor and his wife? We were no
threat, and I thought, consequently, were in no danger. I had not
realized that the fact of my daughter's pregnancy, combined with the
family's position in the community as "intellectuals," made us an
attractive target for the secret police. Nor had I realized how subhuman
they could be. I had no idea, then.

"But they made a great
mistake leaving me alive, even if I was bleeding and unconscious, on the
floor. They had awakened a monster. I never knew, until then, what
murderous thoughts, what barbarous rages, what uncontrollable fury I
could hold in my heart, my mind. Until then I didn't know you could, you
would, actually see red. I had never experienced that kind of blind
rage. It was truly madness, when I thought of them taking my pregnant
daughter, taking our husbands away.

"I got up, went into the
bathroom to see how badly I was hurt. I bathed my head, then my hands. I
put an absorbent bandage on the cut. Then I got dressed, put a hat on
to hide the bandage. I had to get away before they came back.